Comment by shagie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shagie | Hacker News Reader

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Make sure you pay attention to the "how to ask a homework question" for Math.SE - https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1803/how-to-as...

I'll also note that from a previous comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33055240 ) you claim to be a PhD student and the questions you are asking may be deeper than the regular freshman calculus question and thus held to a higher standard (expecting use of the proper terms, and using MathJax / LaTeX for more complicated formulas).

Stack exchange in general, as a Q&A site is optimized for being a Q&A site which means that it traded off some of the ability for it to be a general discussion site and questions that need a back and forth explanation session tend to fit poorly within that framework.

If your question is one that needs that back and forth, you may find it better to schedule some time with a professor or grad student in the math department who can provide that denser communication channel and provide real time feedback on the proper terminology.

The original question I asked was: "How can I define programming struct variables as mathematical notation?". Same question was asked to Math Stack Exchange, downvoted to -5 and deleted. Re-asked Link: https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/149204/how-can-i-defi...

In past, during my master studies, I reach to a Professor about guidance and his response was:

"Unfortunately I cannot do code-checking for you. Please understand. This is absolutely not my duty, but your supervisor's. I am sorry."

Since then I pull myself back and ask direct help. But a year later when I told him that I somehow complete my work his summary of response was:

"Generally speaking (concerning your situation as a "lone fighter" without much help from your personal environment) -- admire you for how far you have reached."

Hence, I am experiencing the same situation as a PhD student. I cannot even get real time feedback on the proper terminology from my PhD advisor. He laughs at me saying highschool students even know this and throws his other students' papers or heavy Algorithms book at me to learn from.

Because I was not able to properly explain my code using math notation, he gave me an "F" in my semester progress just to motivate me.

Overall, reaching out for help using "Stack exchange" was the only place I felt safe even though I get scared sometimes to ask questions.

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